Thursday, December 9, 2010

How Not to Deal With Computer Viruses

I found an email in my spam folder this morning. I don't recommend following its advice on how to deal with a computer virus, but its unintended humor did prompt me to post it here, so that part of the spammer's plan worked, I guess.

After the jump, the spammer's email.

Subject: Internet User

DEAR RECEIVER,

You have just received a Taliban virus. Since we are not so technologicaly advanced in Afghanistan, this is a MANUAL virus. Please delete all the files on your hard disk yourself and send this mail to everyone you know.

Thank you very much for helping us.

Thanks & Regard's

Miss Freya

Seriously, this is likely just a joke (although jokes can sometimes be put to serious purposes, not always benign). It's an example of a virus hoax parody with a long history, although this is the first copy I've received. I'll let Wikipedia explain:

"[A] parody of virus hoaxes is the honor system virus which has been circulated under the name Amish Computer Virus, manual virus, the Blond Computer Virus, the Irish Computer Virus, the Syrian Computer Virus, the Norwegian Computer Virus, Newfie Virus, the Unix Computer Virus, the Mac OS 9 virus, Discount virus and many others. This joke email claims to be authored by the Amish or other similar low-technology population who have no computers, programming skills or electricity to create viruses and thus ask you to delete your own hard drive contents manually after forwarding the message to your friends."